confirmed as Steve Clarke’s successor<\/a> on Sunday and introduced himself to the media on Monday.<\/p>\nClarke ended his seven-year reign earlier this summer after Scotland failed to progress from the World Cup group stage after a victory over Haiti was followed by defeats by Morocco and Brazil.<\/p>\n
Former Belgium defender Pocognoli left Monaco at the end of last season and previously led Union Saint-Gilloise to their first league title in 90 years in 2024-25.<\/p>\n
He becomes only the second foreign boss of the Scotland men’s team, after the German Berti Vogts, and believes he has what it takes to build on Clarke’s “strong foundation”.<\/p>\n
“I’m very proud to be here,” Pocognoli said, flanked by Scottish Football Association (SFA) chiefs Ian Maxwell and Craig Mulholland at his introduction.<\/p>\n
“It’s a very strong challenge, with a project to develop the future of Scottish football. There are the metrics, but the human aspect was also very important. I never go to a challenge where I can’t feel the connection.<\/p>\n
“Scotland is a passionate country and I think also, regarding the strong foundation that Steve Clarke and his staff laid, that I can use this heritage to put the next accent on the style of play while also developing players for the future.<\/p>\n
“That’s why I’m here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Scotland boss Sebastien Pocognoli says the passionate nature of Scottish football was a key factor in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-596043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}